Staff Software Engineer, Backend Infrastructure

Sesame; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401 (k) employer match

100% employer-paid health benefits

Unlimited PTO and sick time

Job summary

Sesame, based in San Francisco, is seeking a skilled software engineer to design, build, and maintain core infrastructure essential for engineering teams. This position involves leading the architecture of a modern ML training infrastructure and ensuring high reliability of voice interfaces.

Candidates should have at least 7 years of experience in software engineering, particularly in infrastructure or ML systems. Sesame values teamwork, creativity, and a commitment to building technology that feels natural and human.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, particularly in infrastructure or ML systems.
• Hands-on experience with deployment systems and observability.
• Proven ability to build and ship services at scale.

Responsibilities

• Design and maintain core infrastructure that supports engineering teams.
• Lead the architecture of ML training infrastructure.
• Build and operate model serving architecture for low latency.

Skills

Systems thinking

Reliability engineering

Kubernetes

Communication skills

Tools

Terraform

PyTorch

Job description

About Sesame

Sesame believes in a future where computers are lifelike - with the ability to see, hear, and collaborate with us in ways that feel natural and human. With this vision, we're designing a new kind of computer, focused on making voice agents part of our daily lives. Our team brings together founders from Oculus and Ubiquity6, alongside proven leaders from Meta, Google, and Apple, with deep expertise spanning hardware and software. Join us in shaping a future where computers truly come alive.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain secure, maintainable, self-serve core infrastructure that engineering teams can rely on and operate independently

• Lead the architecture and evolution of a modern ML training infrastructure — scalable, reproducible, and built for rapid experimentation

• Build and operate a modern model serving architecture with a focus on reliability, cost efficiency, and low latency

• Lead and own the low-latency voice interface and audio processing pipeline — a technically demanding, performance-sensitive system at the core of Sesame's product

• Build developer tooling, server infrastructure, and data infrastructure that is high leverage and low maintenance — the kind that makes other engineers faster without creating new dependencies on you

• Lead technical direction within your domain, bring others along through clear communication and well-reasoned proposals, and raise the engineering bar across the team

Required Qualifications

• A strong systems thinker who is equally comfortable leading technical direction and getting hands-on with implementation

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time in infrastructure, platform, or ML systems roles

• Hands-on reliability engineering experience — you have well-formed convictions about observability, monitoring, deployment systems, and loosely coupled architectures, and you've put them into practice at scale

• Proven track record of building and shipping services at scale, with all the operational complexity that comes with it

• Kubernetes — significant production experience building, operating, and scaling Kubernetes clusters

• Experience designing and shipping flexible domain models and APIs — you think carefully about boundaries, contracts, and long-term maintainability

• A default toward automation — you've consistently built efficiency gains through automation and have the track record to show it

• Strong communication skills — you can lead your own direction, write clearly about tradeoffs, and bring engineers and stakeholders along with you

Preferred Qualifications

We'd love to hear about experience in any of these areas — we don't expect any one person to have all of them:

• Infrastructure as Code at scale — significant IaC experience, preferably Terraform; CloudFormation, Pulumi, or Kubernetes-based approaches also welcome. Ideally you've led, architected, or contributed to a multi-stack, self-serve IaC system and understand the challenges of building infra that teams can own independently

• ML infrastructure — any combination of the following:

  • PyTorch experience, especially model optimisation for serving

  • ML training or serving experience in general

  • Experience building ML serving and/or training infrastructure (TorchServe, Seldon, KServe, Ray Serve, or similar)

  • Experience building and leading large-scale distributed training and serving systems

• Data engineering — pipeline design, dataset management, or data platform experience

• Database design — complex schema design, query optimisation, and hard data modelling decisions across relational and non-relational stores

• Real-time communication systems — low-latency audio, video, or streaming infrastructure

Sesame is committed to a workplace where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered. We welcome all qualified applicants, embracing diversity in race, gender, identity, orientation, ability, and more. We provide reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities. Contact [e-mail] for assistance.

Full-time Employee Benefits:

• 401 (k) max employer match: 3.5% of compensation

• 100% employer-paid health, vision, and dental benefits for you and your dependents

• Unlimited PTO and sick time

• Flexible spending account with employer matching up to $1,650/year (medical FSA)

• Guardian Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

• Opportunity to share in the company's success with competitive stock options

Benefits do not apply to contingent/contract workers.